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My money goes to Hypertherm for anything plasma related. I've had a PM 1000 G3 for about 5 years and it has never failed to make the cut every time I pulled the trigger or hit start on my plasma table. I'll never go to any other vendor, ever.
Bob

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Also important, at least for me,,,, was how much local support / availability of consumables was. I checked thru three states, southern Oregon; Reno, Nevada; Yerington Nevada; and my local area. Ended up buying a Thermal Dynamics,,,,,,,

For me, that was the "best fit". No point in buying the "best" if you have to wait two weeks for parts.

Obviously, I'm just a hack-artist, you shouldn't be listening to anything I say .....

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Also important, at least for me,,,, was how much local support / availability of consumables was. I checked thru three states, southern Oregon; Reno, Nevada; Yerington Nevada; and my local area. Ended up buying a Thermal Dynamics,,,,,,,

For me, that was the "best fit". No point in buying the "best" if you have to wait two weeks for parts.

What ol' Joe says!

When I purchased my Hypertherm I wanted to buy locally. After my favored welding supply informed me they didn't carry the Hypertherm line and suggested I order online I drove across town to my non-favored welding supply to check on their pricing. While waiting 30 minutes for the counterman to figure up his "best price" (his words, not mine) he came back with a price that turned out to be $650 more than what I could order one online for. Calling around I found a welding supply up in Whitefish, MT that would send one down to me with free shipping and no sales tax. The added benefits of free shipping and no sales tax more or less added another $15-$175 incentive to give them the sale. BTW, I often buy my consumables from the non-favored welding supply and let them know they missed out on a sale through one of their sales staff's greed.

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I'm not sure how you are able to say that Hypertherm can outperform Miller. And when was the last time you did a side by side comparison? For several years Miller was buying thier torches from Hypertherm so the quality and performance of the torches is the same. So if it then comes down to the power source, it has been suggested about a million times on this blog that Miller has always built the best power sources.
Have you had a chance to try Miller's new XT torches which are not made by Hypertherm? I have be using the 375 Xtreme with the XT30 torch and will put that up against the Powermax 30 any day, every day.

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I'm not sure how you are able to say that Hypertherm can outperform Miller. And when was the last time you did a side by side comparison? For several years Miller was buying thier torches from Hypertherm so the quality and performance of the torches is the same. So if it then comes down to the power source, it has been suggested about a million times on this blog that Miller has always built the best power sources.
Have you had a chance to try Miller's new XT torches which are not made by Hypertherm? I have be using the 375 Xtreme with the XT30 torch and will put that up against the Powermax 30 any day, every day.

Nice machines.

But my Hypertherms can use the patented FineCut technology. The chrome plated nozzle last up to 5 times longer than conventional bare nozzles. Maybe by the time the Chinese put Hypertherm out of biz, Miller plasmas will have caught up.

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I to was asking myself wich to buy about 2 mos. ago I was going to go blue of course due to the high quality and never letting me down for many yrs. now, however I recently went to a trade show where my current weld store was there and I DID use both the miller and the hypertherm side by side and found there was no difference in performance. With that being said this where my MILLER sales rep informed me that hypertherm holds ALL the patends on plasmas ,so basicaly everyone is putting there parts inside a different color sheet metal (what ever that may be) and putting there name on it. So the bottom line is all the internals came from hypertherm. So why would you go to the student when you can go right to the teacher sort of the thing.

This was just my experience not saying its right or wrong, however I can tell you there is a new hypertherm sitting under my miller tig and my miller mig and i am totaly satisfied with all three of them! Good luck

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Your Miller salesman is a moron, and yes a plasma of the same amperage, will cut about the same as any other brand. The guts may be totally different but the end result is the same. Its the cut quality, the reliability, and consumable life that counts.

There are zero hypertherm parts in other brands, can't really patent theory, how a salesman comes up with this crap is beyond me.